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Johnston

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Mayor Joseph Polisena certainly has some interesting developments coming to Johnston under his new administration.

Businesses coming to town:

New facilities:

A. Duie Pyle, the freight trucking co. from Pennsylvania that you may recall from the news report about the legislature fiasco awhile ago, will be opening a facility soon. (120 new jobs)

FedEx Ground 40 new jobs, said to be opening in the near future.

FM Global, which has already been mentioned on other threads here, will be building a new $60 million facility, instead of moving to Rt. 128 in Mass.

800 jobs stay and 500 new ones will be added.

In a related and important note, FM Global, 195 Associates and RI DOT are working on widening Atwood Ave. to help the traffic issue. I've seen some orange markers on brush, etc. on either side of the road between FM Global and the Home Depot plaza.

Potential businesses in Johnston: Super Walmart, Sam's Club and Best Buy. I believe the Super Walmart and Sam's Club are slated for development behind the Home Depot store. Best Buy, I would certainly like to come in, and I guess they would also be in this same plaza.

BJ's Wholesale Club - Polisena and the town council are working on keeping them in Johnston.

Developers are offering proposals for some vacant land along Hartford Ave. Could this be the old Stuart's plaza? Or could it be the old McDonald's site?

The net result of this is millions in tax revenue.

Soccer fields are being built in time for youth rec. in the spring.

This is going to be interesting to see how all of this unfolds.

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Atwood Ave is a nightmare. When they widen it they better fix the flooding problem.

And another Super Walmart in a horrible location, yay! Pretty soon every town in this state will have its own big box retail blob so nobody will ever have to leave their town and at the same time not be able to walk anywhere.

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Come to think of it, the old Mobil station is another place recently out of business.

I'd like to see something like a movie theater put in the Stuart's plaza. I like Best Buy and I'm there pretty regularly either in Waterford or Seekonk during the racing season.

Wal-Mart - I don't necessarily see the benefit when there is another location in Cranston on Plainfield Pike.

Sam's Club - closest one for me is Seekonk offhand. As long as either Sam's Club or BJ's is local that's fine with me.

Someone recently suggested Target and I think that would be a better fit since there's already a WalMart in the area. Then again, there's a Home Depot in Providence, Cranston, Johnston, Smithfield among others, so having a brand ubiquitous here is not unheard of, ie: Dunkin' Donuts.

I'm merely trying to give credit where it is due. The mayor, town council, etc. are making some good economic progress here by keeping some businesses in town, bringing new ones to the area and actually getting some things done. That's more than I can say for the man he replaced at times during his administration. For a lifelong resident like myself (currently searching for a job after I graduate), this is beneficial with these new jobs coming to town for obvious reasons.

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If I remember right there was publicity a year or two ago about the existing Walmart (in the rojacks plaza) closing and being replaced by the new location behind Home Depot. After that there was some movement behind Walmart clearing land and whatnot and then it all stopped. I would assume that project is dead in the water at this point, but who knows. It seems like with Rojacks closed it would make more sense to demo that entire plaza if they wanted to do a Super Walmart.

Johnston is kind of ripe for lousy big box development. The last thing we need is another strip mall hell to add to the Rt2 Warwick / Rt6 Seekonk / Rt1 Attleboro trinity, but with Johnston hurting for revenue and a history of lax zoning, I would assume this will come to pass the next time the economy perks up again.

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If only Rhode Island had some short of tax revenue pool between communities then we wouldn't need each little town competing for these big boxes to increase their tax base. Until then we'll keep making inadequate roads like Atwood Ave into Route 1, 2 and 6 in the name of revenue.

Honestly thought I cannot imagine throwing a Super Walmart, Best Buy and Sams Club onto that hill behind Home Depot. They would need to widen Atwood Ave considerably to 5 lanes and do major upgrades to the Route 6 interchange just to avoid total gridlock. And the flooding, yeah lets add more impervious surface to an area that floods every time it rains a quarter of an inch...

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Back in the mid-90's I used to drive 295 between 95 and 146 fairly often (going from Worcester to Newport and back). It was always like a nice drive through the country once you got past the RI mall. Now it is like suburban hell. Drive the length and it compares (this is not a compliment, mind you) to the Garden State Parkway.

I don't like Rhode Island getting Jersified.

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The developer promised that the arrival of the two box stores and other businesses, perhaps even a hotel, would bring hundreds of new jobs to Stonehill Marketplace and as much as $3 million in tax revenue to the town.